Two dealers, one entry point. Both take you at roughly $10,000, both route metal to third-party custodians and insured vaults, both bill a flat annual figure. From there they separate: one publishes its price list and names its partners, the other is cheaper to hold and arrives with a state enforcement file. Both sets of numbers below, plus a ten-year projection on $50,000.
Advertising disclosure: Gold IRA Consulting is reader-supported. We may earn a commission when you open an account through some links on this page (marked sponsored). This never influences our editorial scores, which are based on independent research.
Choose Birch Gold Group if you want the cost in front of you before a sales call. It publishes every line item, names three custodian partners you can look up, carries all four IRA-eligible metals, and shows the lighter complaint record. Choose Lear Capital if the annual holding cost is your deciding number and you have read its file.
Be honest about the trade, because the table is: Lear is cheaper to keep, roughly $200 a year against Birch’s roughly $265, and our ten-year projection on $50,000 lands about $355 in Lear’s favor even after Birch waives an entire first year. Lear also carries a June 2021 civil action from the New York Attorney General over fee disclosure, resolved in January 2022 by a $6 million consent order with no admission of liability, plus a Chapter 11 reorganization completed in 2024. If a clean regulatory file is a requirement rather than a preference, that decides this before the fee math votes.
Neither firm holds your metal itself; neither charges a percentage of assets. Absences below are recorded as absences.
| LINE ITEM | BIRCH GOLD GROUP | LEAR CAPITAL |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum investment | ~$10,000 | ~$10,000 |
| Setup fee | $50 one-time, published | Inside a reported ~$280 first year |
| Annual custodian and storage cost | $110 storage and insurance, $125 management, $30 wire, stated as roughly $265 a year, flat | ~$200 a year after year one, flat |
| Custodian you inherit | Equity Trust, STRATA Trust or GoldStar Trust, named publicly | NOT PUBLISHED |
| Depository | Delaware Depository, Brink’s, International Depository Services, Texas Precious Metals Depository | Insured IRS-approved vaults, names NOT PUBLISHED |
| Metals covered | Gold, silver, platinum, palladium | Gold and silver |
| Buyback program | Repurchases what it sold you, no headline guarantee marketed | Quotes to repurchase, a practice rather than a price guarantee |
| Current promotion | First year waived on qualifying rollovers of $50,000 or more | Waivers reported by funding level, thresholds NOT PUBLISHED |
| BBB record | A+, accredited 2013, roughly 8 complaints closed in three years, all resolved. BBB profile | No rating we have verified. Check the live BBB directory. |
| Regulatory history | None found in the primary sources we reviewed | 2021 New York AG civil action, $6M consent order Jan 2022 without admission, Chapter 11 completed 2024 |
| Best for | Buyers who want the price list before the phone call, and any platinum or palladium allocation | Buyers optimizing annual holding cost who will read the file themselves |
Source: published company material, restated from our Birch Gold Group review and Lear Capital review, verified Jun 2026. Legal-history entries are sourced individually below.
Fifty thousand is the right test balance, because it is the exact figure at which Birch’s waiver switches on. Birch starts well ahead, then hands the lead back.
| SCENARIO ON $50,000 | FIRST YEAR | FIVE YEARS | TEN YEARS | WHAT DRIVES IT |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Birch, qualifying $50,000 rollover | ~$50 | ~$1,110 | ~$2,435 | Year one waived, $50 setup still modelled as payable, then ~$265 a year |
| Lear Capital | ~$280 | ~$1,080 | ~$2,080 | Reported ~$280 first year, then ~$200 a year |
| Birch, funding that does not qualify | ~$315 | ~$1,375 | ~$2,700 | Setup plus the full schedule from year one, the position near the minimum |
| Gap, waived Birch against Lear | Birch by ~$230 | Lear by ~$30 | Lear by ~$355 | A $65 annual difference erases Birch’s head start in year five |
Illustrative arithmetic, not a quote. Built on figures verified Jun 2026: Birch at $50 setup, $110 storage and insurance, $125 management and a $30 wire, stated as ~$265 a year, first year waived on qualifying rollovers of $50,000 or more; Lear at a reported ~$280 first year and ~$200 thereafter. Birch’s $265 includes the wire, so a buyer who funds once is nearer $235 a year. Neither column includes the dealer markup over spot.
Lear is the cheaper account to hold, and it gets there sooner than the waiver headline implies. Birch opens $230 up and gives it all back during year five, after which the gap widens by about $65 a year. Plenty of comparison pages declare a winner, then print a table showing it losing on cost; we are not doing that. Keep it in proportion, though: $355 across a decade is about $35 a year, while three points of markup over spot on a $50,000 purchase is $1,500, gone before your first statement lands. Our gold IRA fees guide lists every line either firm can charge, and the comparison chart sets both against the field.
It prices itself in public. Birch prints $50 setup, $30 wire, $110 storage and insurance and $125 management where anyone can read them. A firm that publishes a schedule can be held to it; a firm that quotes one can revise it between your first call and your second, and you will have nothing to point at. That is why every Lear figure here carries the word approximately.
It names the custodian before you sign. Equity Trust, STRATA Trust and GoldStar Trust, against no name at all from Lear. That outlives every promotion on this page, because the custodian sets the schedule your account is billed on for as long as it exists, while a waiver covers twelve months.
Four metals, not two, and a wider choice of vault. Platinum and palladium are available at Birch and not at Lear, a filter rather than a preference. Birch also lists four depositories, so location and segregation become conversations instead of assumptions. See gold IRA storage.
The complaint record is lighter. A+ at the BBB, accredited since 2013, roughly 8 complaints closed over three years, all resolved. One fair qualification: a low count partly reflects smaller customer flow, and Birch’s feedback base is thin at around 300 Trustpilot reviews.
The standing cost, which is the table talking rather than us. Roughly $200 against roughly $265 is a quarter off the annual figure, and a real advantage from year five onward. For a fifteen or twenty year holder, the recurring number matters more than the opening one, and Lear owns it.
A longer trading history. 1997 against 2003. Not decisive alone, but in a category where brands appear, buy three years of radio advertising and vanish, surviving several metals cycles counts for something.
Binding disclosure commitments Birch does not operate under. Counterintuitive, and real. The January 2022 consent order requires clear fee disclosure and a 24-hour cancellation window on retirement transactions; the reorganization plan adds undertakings not to misrepresent fees or hold itself out as an investment adviser. Those are supervised constraints on exactly the conduct that caused the trouble, and no competitor here operates under anything comparable.
A much larger feedback base. Trustpilot placed Lear in the high fours out of five in mid 2026, roughly 4.7 to 4.9 across several thousand reviews, against Birch’s roughly 300. Both averages are good; only one rests on a large sample.
Three things get blurred constantly here. An allegation is what somebody asserted. A finding is what a court or regulator determined. A settlement without admission of liability is neither, and it is where most of what follows sits.
On 17 June 2021 the New York Attorney General filed a civil action against Lear Capital, Inc. and its founder, alleging undisclosed commissions of up to 33 percent and operation while unregistered, affecting nearly 1,000 New Yorkers. On 3 January 2022 the same office announced a $6 million consent order closing it. The release records no admission of liability, and this was civil enforcement, not criminal prosecution. Calling it a fraud conviction would be false, and plenty of published content does exactly that.
Lear filed Chapter 11 under Subchapter V in March 2022 and kept trading throughout. On 2 August 2023 the Texas State Securities Board announced that Texas had joined a multistate group that recouped $5.5 million for investors through the case. Lear states the reorganization completed in 2024.
Birch’s half is short, and the shortness is the point. The independent record available is its BBB profile. Birch also publishes its own complaints and lawsuit-claims pages, stating that reports of legal actions against it are false. We credit hosting them, but they are not verification: a firm’s account of its own history is not independent.
| IF THIS IS YOU | PICK | WHY |
|---|---|---|
| Opening your first gold IRA | Birch Gold Group | Every figure is checkable before anyone calls you, and the custodian is named. |
| Rolling over $50,000 or more, holding five years or less | Birch Gold Group | The waiver puts you roughly $230 ahead in year one and you exit before Lear catches up. |
| Holding ten years or more, optimizing annual cost | Lear Capital | About $355 cheaper by year ten and still widening. The table says Lear. |
| Funding near the $10,000 minimum | Lear Capital, with reservations | Birch’s waiver needs $50,000, so you pay full freight from day one: 2.65 percent of a $10,000 balance against 2.0. See minimum investment. |
| Wanting platinum or palladium | Birch Gold Group | Lear sells gold and silver only. A filter, not a preference. |
| Treating a clean regulatory file as a requirement | Birch Gold Group | Lear’s 2021 New York matter is documented public record. No fee advantage answers a threshold requirement. |
Recommendations follow from the published figures above, verified Jun 2026. Confirm terms in writing before funding.
Published schedule, named custodians, four metals, in at ~$10,000, first year waived on a qualifying $50,000 rollover. Ask for the markup over spot in writing.
Visit Birch Gold Group →Trading since 1997, in at ~$10,000, roughly $200 a year flat and the cheaper account past year five. Read the 2021 New York matter and the 2024 reorganization first, sourced below.
Visit Lear Capital →Birch Gold Group for most readers, on disclosure rather than price. Birch publishes its full schedule before any sales call, names Equity Trust, STRATA Trust and GoldStar Trust as custodian partners, and covers all four IRA-eligible metals. Lear has traded since 1997 and costs less to hold each year, but it carries a 2021 New York Attorney General action settled for $6 million in January 2022 without admission of liability, plus a Chapter 11 reorganization completed in 2024. Fees verified Jun 2026.
Lear Capital, and we will say so even though our verdict leans the other way. On $50,000, Birch waives year one for a qualifying $50,000 rollover, opening at roughly $50 against Lear’s roughly $280. Birch then bills roughly $265 a year where Lear bills roughly $200, and that gap consumes the head start during year five. By year ten our projection puts Birch near $2,435 and Lear near $2,080. Fees verified Jun 2026.
Both open at approximately $10,000, so the minimum settles nothing here. The threshold that matters sits higher up: Birch waives your first year only on a qualifying rollover of $50,000 or more, five times its own entry point, so anyone arriving at the minimum pays the full schedule from day one. Lear is reported to allow waivers by funding level but publishes no thresholds. Minimums verified Jun 2026.
Birch Gold Group. A first-time buyer gains most from checking every figure without a phone call, and from a named custodian whose own fee page can be read independently. Lear is workable but asks more of you: request the full schedule, ask for the markup over spot as a percentage, and read the 2021 New York matter yourself rather than accept a summary.
Keep going: the comparison chart, the fee calculator, the fees guide, and how we rank.
Lear, June 2021 allegations: New York Attorney General, press release of 17 June 2021 and the petition. Pleadings contain allegations, not findings.
Lear, January 2022 resolution: New York Attorney General, press release of 3 January 2022, a $6 million civil consent order recording no admission of liability.
Multistate recovery and plan terms: Texas State Securities Board, 2 August 2023 ($5.5 million); In re Lear Capital, Inc., Subchapter V Chapter 11 plan, via the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation. Completion is the company’s own statement.
Ratings and complaints: Birch BBB profile; Birch’s own complaints record and lawsuit claims page, cited as company position, not verification. For Lear we cite no rating of our own: check the BBB directory and the Lear and Birch Trustpilot profiles.
Tax and product rules: IRS Publication 590-A, 590-B, IRC 408(m)(3), IRS rollover guidance; McNulty v. Commissioner, 157 T.C. No. 10 (2021). On markups: CFTC advisory and the SEC Office of Investor Education and Advocacy.
Company figures: published company material, verified Jun 2026, restated from our Birch review and Lear review. Confirm every figure in writing before funding. Education, not financial advice. See our editorial policy.
The free 2026 kit carries the fee and custodian comparison behind this page, plus the questions to put to any dealer in writing.